Red Card Winners – Whose Better With Ten Men

Ever wondered which team tend to have the best response to going down to ten men?

Common sense dictates that games should be easier to win when you have the full compliment of 11 players on the pitch, but that isn’t always the case with card happy referees and over zealous officiating – and that’s when the red card or double yellow isn’t fully justified following an attempted challenge.

The Mirror got together with Opta for a piece last weekend and they looked specifically at which teams had a better success rate in matches when they had been reduced to ten men and the numbers were crunched going back to the introduction of the Premier League back in 1992.

Arsenal are effectively the red card kings as they are the only side to have won more games than they have lost when having had a player sent off in the Premier League, with the blue half of Liverpool – Everton – being the side with the worst record when being reduced to ten men.

Manchester United come closest across the years as they have only lost three more games than they have won when down to ten men, but clearly Tottenham Hotspur and Manchester City are more likely to lose than when when the opposition hold the numerical advantage.

Limiting it to this season’s Premier League title challengers in their eyes and Everton, here are the full results.